Student reaction was swift when the Associated Students Government Elections results were read aloud by AS Elections Coordinator Juliana Todesco at 7:50 p.m., Thursday, March 15.

The meeting room near Viejas Arena echoed with whoops of joy while others shed tears in disappointment.

By the numbers

This year’s election saw votes from 3,377 San Diego State students, about 12 percent of the 27,835 enrolled this semester. Turnout for the election was about mid-range for what organizers have seen in recent years, with a high of 15 percent of students voting in 2009.

“For me, it’s really all about the student involvement,” Todesco said. “I know that there’s still a lot of room for improvement for how many students we get to come out and vote. Hopefully, in the coming years, we can implement different campaign strategies to get the students to come out and vote more.”

New slate of student leaders

The unofficial results — AS Council will certify the results at its March 21 meeting — showed that students selected the following candidates for executive office:

Robert O’Keefe, president

Channelle McNutt, executive vice president

Tom Rivera, vice president of external affairs

Eric Anderberg, vice president of finance

Matt Cecil, vice president of university affairs

College representatives were also elected. Some races were very competitive with as many as nine people running for three seats to represent the College of Business Administration. Full election results are available online.

Clean campaign

According to Todesco, this year’s election went smoothly, even with multiple candidates for several positions and a large pool of candidates overall.

“I’m very pleased with the way things went with this election,” she said. “All the candidates played very fairly and respected the code. All in all, it went very well.”